Return Of The Well Hidden

A blast of thunder woke Bill violently from his sleep and his forehead collided with the wooden boards that were just inches above his face. After letting out a series of expletives he moved his eyes around to see that he was sleeping in the dirt beneath something. He could see a band of faint light to his left and so he began to shimmy his way out from under whatever he was under. His hands touched wet grass as he pulled himself out from his hole and after a few seconds of struggling he could finally see what had happened.
Bill had been sleeping under a wooden porch that, standing there in the dark, didn’t look familiar to him. The only light around was a small porch light that was placed near the top of the back door to the house. His head throbbed like he had been on a strict loud noise diet, and after taking a few steps he immediately threw up. Before he had a chance to recover a neighbor’s dog on the other side of the chain link fence behind him saw him and started barking. It was held back only by the flimsy metal of the fence that was slightly bending as the big dog leaned against it.
Bill ran away at full speed hopping another fence to get out of the back yard and out to the street. When he got there, he just picked a random direction and kept running. His lungs hurt for some reason and as he ran, he noticed his jacket smelled like thick smoke. He turned a corner and nearly passed out from relief when he saw his crappy blue car sitting alone beneath a flickering street light. He heard thunder again, it hadn’t started pouring yet, but he didn’t want to be out there when it did, so he jogged over to the car.
As Bill got closer to his vehicle, he noticed something odd. There was an arm with dark skin, that was covered in what looked to be temporary tattoos, sticking out from under his vehicle. Still barely able to get his thoughts together Bill gave the arm a gentle nudge with his shoe and got no response. Since that didn’t work, he decided to see who was under there, so Bill laid down on his stomach and tried to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. After they did, he recognized who the mysterious figure was; it was his friend Garret. This was when everything started to come back to him. Bill pulled Garret out from under the car by his arm and after he got his upper torso out Garret sprang awake and pulled away from Bill’s grip. He said something that didn’t make any sense and tried to actually weasel back under the car and would have had Bill not said repeatedly that it was him. Garret eventually heard what Bill was saying and was relieved. Bill helped him to his feet, and now that they were both standing in the light, he could see that Garret didn’t just have temporary tattoos all over his arm, but they were all over his face, neck, and other arm as well.
Garret immediately went into a long tirade about a party and the police, and how he was so afraid that they had caught him. Bill now remembered most of this himself. Much earlier that night the two of them went to a party at a girl named Kelly’s house. Most of the details were lost but Bill remembered drinking quite a bit and smoking these long thin cigars. Garret pulled him out of his own memories when he asked if Bill remembered the two of them taking MDMA? Bill didn’t remember this, but if he did do MDMA it would have been his first time. According to Garret they both did in fact do that drug, and they had both been tripping big time. That’s when the cops showed up and everyone scattered. From the looks of it they arrested most of the other guests.
Bill reached into his pocket to retrieve his keys, so he could drive them home and they could put an end to this confusing endeavor, but when he reached for them, they were gone. They must have been left behind at the party. He told this to Garret who started immediately panicking about his parents finding out about all this, and how typical it was that he escaped the cops but wouldn’t be able to make it back home before his folks woke up. Bill was nervous too but knew there was no sense in panicking. If he returned home without his car and smelling like smoke and beer, he would be fucked. The two of them talked a bit more and eventually agreed they would have to try and head back to Kelly’s to retrieve his keys.
The walk back to her house took about ten minutes. They had to park pretty far away because of all the other guests. Their cars were gone now though undoubtedly driven home, by one of their parents while the other went to the station to bail them out. It had started to rain, which made the tattoos on Garret’s skin slide downward like they were held on with adhesive. The house looked pretty safe to approach there was no flashing lights of police cars anywhere to be seen, and most of the windows were dark.
The two of them quietly hopped the fence into the backyard and were both relieved to see that the window to Kelly’s room’s light was on. This is when they realized that neither of them had her cellphone number. So, Bill decided they would have to do the, throw the small rock at the window thing. Garret was concerned about this because the whole act seemed a bit misogynistic to him considering that it was a move directly out of a romantic comedy. Bill assured him however, that this couldn’t be that because there was no romantic intent behind it at all, they just needed their keys. Just before he was about to throw the pebble again Garret stopped him now worried that the light could be a trick. In his mind that light could be her Dad waiting to trap any criminals that returned to the scene of the crime. Bill was infected with the paranoia, but knew they had no other choice and threw the rock anyway. There was no immediate response but after a few seconds a girl with short dyed black hair slid open the window and peered out. It was like she had been expecting them all night, and without them having to say anything she threw the keys out the window, and into the rain.